Go Wrong
by Kihin Ranno
Summary: Was I destined to go wrong? Was losing my soul, my conscience one of the things that could go wrong, so it had to go wrong? I hope so. I don’t like to think of a life where I’m anything but a monster. It’s just easier.


Go Wrong  
Winner of the .moon Summer Challenge  
Murphy's Law  
by Kihin Ranno  
1/1

_I know all about Murphy's Law. It's impossible to be surrounded by normal people with their insignificant annoyances they turn into catastrophes and not know it by heart. According to Murphy, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. So when you drop your nail polish on your plush white carpet or when your car won't start on the morning of your very important meeting, you can blame it on him._

_Nevermind that he was paraphrasing Sod's Law. And also he was joking._

_Still, I wonder what he'd have to say about me. Was I destined to go wrong? Was losing my soul, my conscience, one of the things that could go wrong, so it had to go wrong?_

_Was the birth of my darkness inevitable?_

_I hope so. I don't like to think of a life where I'm anything but a monster. It's just easier. _

_

* * *

_

After stowing his bag in the overhead compartment, Dexter sinks into his too-small airline seat. He tries relaxing, at least as much as one can in seating designed to pack in as many people as possible. Sardines in a flying tin.

He stretches out one leg as far it can go beneath the passenger in front of him, watching it briefly convulse as his muscles react to the tension. He turns to grin at his seatmate, but she dives beneath the latest Jodi Picoult novel three seconds too late. Her mousy ringlets surround her face, a mud-colored cloud, and her eyes scan the page as if her life depends on her speed.

_

* * *

_

_So nervous. She doesn't even know who she's sitting next to. Or what. I wonder how she'd react to find out._

_Of course, on one level, the answer blares out like a police siren. If she or anyone else in this trap ever knew what horrors I've committed, there'd be pandemonium. Emergency landing, barricading me in the lavatory… maybe someone would even bash my skull in with their child's stroller to save them from the big bad Bay Harbor Butcher._

_I can almost picture it. Little Jenny or Jimmy watching with horror as their daddy, the one they so look up to and wish they can be like when they grow up, viciously bludgeons me to death._

_It would probably be righteous. I'm human, and I have basic instincts. I don't want to die; I'll fight for my life. But if someone asked me if I thought I deserved it, I'd probably have to admit that I did._

_I know how the fairy tales go. The dragons are slain. The trolls are dismembered. The witches are burned. I know which side of the moral I fall on. _

_

* * *

_

Dexter surges forward, folding as though moved by some great force. When he turns, he sees that power giving him a toothless grin, wickedly innocent eyes gleaming. Dexter raises an eyebrow, and the boy pushes again, the pressure from his feet finding an old bruise.

"James, stop that. It's not nice." This is all the mother has in her arsenal, all she can do to save Dexter's spine.

He gives her a particularly hard look, but she doesn't seem to be paying any attention to the world. She doesn't blink when the boy, James, pushes a third time. Dexter's forehead brushes the seat in front of him, and he valiantly swallows an oath. Or maybe it was a threat.

"What can go wrong…" he mutters to no one. Certainly not the seatmate so invested in her novel, the one who has yet to turn a single page.

_

* * *

_

_I wonder what would happen to little Jimmy if his mummy were the hero in our tale. He's too old for a stroller, but it never ceases to amaze me how many common items can be turned into weapons even in this hyper-paranoid post-9/11 world. House keys or a pen to the jugular. Her belt, if she could loop it around my neck fast enough. Her shoe could kill me if she could muster the force. And she probably could to protect her child. I'm no terrorist, but in some ways I'm worse. I'm the creature from the shadows. I'm the villain in the nightmares. I'm the wolf that cut grandma into little bitty pieces and threw her in the ocean.  
If Little Red Riding Hood taught us anything, it's this: the wolf has to be put down._

_And I wonder what that would do to little Jimmy. With my blood, a fine mist, painting the walls of the cabin and probably even staining his Spiderman sneakers my back is becoming so intimately acquainted with, would he forever dream in red? Would he see a neighbor's dog and salivate at the thought of twisting the yapping thing's neck around? Would he drink violence and take pleasure in it? Would he become a killer?_

_That would certainly be fulfilling Murphy's, or Sod's, Law. Kill one monster only to create another. Continue the pathology as if it were some sort of poison in the blood. It would seep into his veins, turning him into me. No longer able to tell his mother that he loves her with any certainty because he doesn't feel human anymore. Because he isn't human anymore._

_And with no Harry to even try to direct him or control his instincts, he could become the worst sort of killer. Just the sort that wind up under my knife, just the sort that the Miami Police Department dragged up from the depths just months ago.  
Just the sort I'll go after again and again and again. It's going to happen. Has to happen.  
The wolf's appetite must be satisfied. _

_

* * *

_

Dexter winces for the seventh time as the captain announces they are ready for take-off.

"Then again, maybe he's already a sociopath," he mutters, looking forward to Cody and Astor, who have never been so vicious. He finds himself smiling, thinking of them and Rita with fondness. For a moment, he drifts away from the cramped airplane with its stale air and staler pretzels, and he thinks of what awaits him in Florida. He exhales even as the eighth kick finds the bruise again, sinking into his seat and drifting away as far as he can go.

_

* * *

_

_I'm moving forward. Onward, to a life with a new code to live by and Harry no longer hovering. Back to Cody and Astor and Rita. Back to Deb and Angel and even Masuka._

_The people I wish I could love._

_But I'm still running away. Away from Paris and the corpses, bodies whose lives I never wanted to take. Doakes, although what's left of him is buried in Florida. Destroyed by me, however indirectly. I've avenged him, but I wouldn't have to if I hadn't been made into this. If I didn't have this darkness inside._

_And then of course there's Lila. The woman I thought I should love. The woman maybe part of me did._

_But it wasn't her spirit I loved. It was my shadow and her shadow. Our darkness. Our disease._

_Our killer instincts. _

_

* * *

_

Darkly, Dexter dreams.

He's standing on a lawn that can't possibly be real for how verdant it is. Flowers bloom in window boxes. There's a white picket fence and a house in a neighborhood he's never seen before. The only recognizable things are Cody and Astor, playing some fusion of tag and hide-n-seek around a tree he knows can't grow in Miami. Rita enters his vision soon after, stringy blonde hair trailing behind her as she chases after her children, a wider smile than he's ever seen her wear painted on her face.

There's warmth next to him, but it leaves him cold.

"Hello, Lila."

"How bloody perfect for you," she snits in an accent that tries too hard to be posh. He smells smoke, but she doesn't have a cigarette. "Happy family now that you've killed me."

Dexter sighs. "You know, I almost regret it, Lila. And some part of me… buried, is sorry." He starts to close his eyes, but then he doesn't. He doesn't want to look away from the sunshine he shouldn't possess. "But it was necessary."

"To avenge your sergeant," Lila concludes, probably rolling her eyes. "After he spent the better part of his career trying to destroy you. Misplaced loyalties there, Dexter."

"And to protect them," Dexter reminds her, his eyes never swinging around to meet hers.

Rita runs low at Cody, taking him down in a tackle filled with giggles and flailing child limbs. Astor comes careening around the corner, ponytail swinging as she runs, and then throws herself onto the pile. So many smiles. Enough to break him, and enough to sustain him.

"He had to die," Lila murmurs in his ear, her voice like mulled wine and acid. "You must know that."

He does, but he doesn't like to admit it.

"What's the point of this?" Dexter asks. "What's my subconscious trying to tell me? I've made my choice. You're dead; they're alive. So why the dream sequence?"

"Not everything has to have such a deep reason full of seven layers of meaning," Lila chides. "Don't be so fucking cerebral, Dexter."

Dexter shrugs. "I want to see them. I'm guilty about killing you…. They meshed and now this?"

He turns.

But it's not Lila anymore. He's staring now at Doakes, bits of his mahogany skin burned and twisted to blackness, scorched by a bitch's fire. His eyes seem to flare red with fury. Dexter glances down. Doakes has no legs. It's just the torso. Just what they found of him.  
He remembers the kicking child's first name. James.

"And now this," Dexter wheezes.

Doakes's hands stretch out, still smoking and rotting. Dexter feels the pressure on his neck before Doakes takes hold. He smiles the way killers do.

"You better believe it, motha--"

* * *

Dexter wakes to a scream.

The cabin shakes like they're nothing more than a toy in someone's hands. The beverage cart screeches past his row, colliding with a flight attendant struggling to get to their feet. Luggage falls, papers, clothing, and contraband trying to rain down, hurting towards the front of the plane. The air masks fall from the overhead compartments. The woman next to him grips his wrist like a claw.

They're in a nosedive.

He panics, just like everyone else, and fumbles for his cell phone. But it's not in his pocket; it's in his bag. He leans out, trying to see if he can grab it, but the bin is empty.

He hears jingles and pings as almost every other passenger pulls out their cell phones, placing one last call to their loved ones.

"I can't call," Dexter whispers. "I don't have my phone. I can't call."

He looks to his companion for an answer, a solution. She can't do anything but sob.

_

* * *

_

_It's not fair. I know that every other person on this airplane thinks the same thing, underneath the panic and the fear, but really, it isn't right. I went to Paris to kill, but I also went to protect. Just like every kill I can ever claim has been a form of protection. I've killed to save innocent people from myself, to save them from my victims. And now I don't even get to say goodbye to anyone._

_It's not fair. _

_

* * *

_

And then, with his seatmate's white knuckled hand trembling in his own and the sound of infantile screaming just behind him, Dexter remembers.

What can go wrong, will go wrong.

And amidst the shrieks and prayers, Dexter laughs.

But maybe he cries too.


End file.
